


Stars, Hide Your Fires

by la_muerta



Series: Flash Bang #1 - Bingo (Team Green) [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, Character Study, Episode: s03e03 What Lies Beneath, Ficlet, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, fic bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 10:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14376672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_muerta/pseuds/la_muerta
Summary: Raphael told his baby sister Rosa that if she were ever homesick or lonely, that she could look to the stars - the truth is, every time he felt homesick, he'd look to the stars too.For the Shadowhunters Hiatus Flash Bang #1 - BingoSquare #17: Homesick





	Stars, Hide Your Fires

 

He was 19 when he was turned. 

He'd been too poor for school, too busy trying to help his Mamá make ends meet so they could feed all his brothers and sisters to look up at the stars at night. If it hadn't been for little Rosa crying inconsolably every night, if he hadn't been at his wit's end trying to think of a way to distract her from her misery, he wouldn't have noticed the stars at all. After that, he'd sit up with her on the nights she couldn't sleep, making up constellations for her - sometimes silly ones, like the one he insisted looked exactly like her favourite rag doll, to make her laugh. 

He never knew the names of the stars until after he was turned and there was nothing else to look at but the endless night sky. And even after he knew them, he refused to remember them, preferring the names he'd made up with Rosa all those years ago. 

When his family had been alive and healthy, he'd had to watch them from a distance. Making sure they got home safe when they were working late, or were out with friends or dates at night. And on the nights he couldn't go out and lurk around them, he'd look up at the stars and murmur half-forgotten prayers to a God that was probably ignoring him because he was now one of the eternally damned. Then after his Mamá passed, he'd lost the rest of them as well - María was beaten to death by her drunk husband, José died in a work accident, Ricardo had cancer... Until all that was left to him was Rosa. 

Little Rosa, who had always gone to him when she needed comfort, who had always insisted on saving some of her candy for him, who had preferred to hold his hand instead of their Mamá's. His baby sister, who had slowly forgotten who he was when her brain had started to waste away from the dementia, but had still remembered the silly constellations he'd made up for her. 

And now she's gone, too. And what is the point of the stars when nobody else remembers that the constellation other people call Orion is _really_ named Princess Luisa del Rosario? 

_What is the fucking point of them anyway?_

Raphael doesn't look up at the stars anymore. 

 

 


End file.
